by Deon Meyer
That was something to be thankful for.
But, still, would he take it like a man if she said no?
While he was still struggling just to pay for the ring?
And what would he do then, on the other side of a ‘no’?
He drove to work with his focus on the docket, and with slight unease, a niggle in the back of his mind, knowing that somehow they had overlooked something. He ran through everything from the beginning again, so absorbed that he didn’t experience the usual frustration over the delays caused by the freeway construction works and the traffic jamming the N1 beyond Panorama.
Was it something about Robyn Johnson, the ex-wife of the victim, that bothered him?
No, despite the crime statistics that indicated they ought to view her as a suspect.
The lying Sergeant Dimba?
That wasn’t what was evading him. He knew Dimba was lying. They would find out why.
The stolen laptop? The missing baggage? The Okapi blade?
He gave up when he parked in the DPCI basement. He knew it would leap out and bite him when he wasn’t expecting it. He just had to keep on probing.
Chapter 25
The corridor became a gallery. The IMC printed out all the photos that the train passengers had sent, in black-and-white to keep costs down. Captain Frank Fillander taped them to the wall, on the left-hand side as you walked from Mbali Kaleni’s office. First there was a row at eye level, but as the day advanced more photos kept arriving, and the entire wall between the detectives’ offices became a chronicle of the journey from Cape Town to Johannesburg, people looking relaxed and smiling, chatting, eating, drinking and looking out over the spectacular scenery of mountains, valleys and plains.
Fillander, Mooiwillem Liebenberg and Vusi Ndabeni tried to identify each passenger on the photos by writing the names in thick black ink beside the faces. It was a slow, torturous process, as they had to make sure who had sent the email and study the accompanying descriptions carefully – not always easy as the information was sometimes unclear. The faces were still unfamiliar to them, the photos taken from different angles, and the clothing changing depending on the day the photograph had been taken. The passengers were predominantly white and sixty-plus. ‘And,’ said Vaughn Cupido, when the trio came to complain about their task, ‘seventy is the new sixty, so don’t go looking for two geriatrics. They might be pretty sprightly. Just keep going. Keep going.’
Griessel and Cupido were doing footwork of their own. After morning parade they drove to the court to obtain article 205 subpoenas for Johnson’s bank account, and the cell-phone records of Sergeant Kagiso Dimba and Robyn Johnson.
‘So, have you invited her to the fancy dinner, Benna?’ Cupido wanted to know.
‘I have,’ said Griessel.
‘And?’
‘She’s coming. And she doesn’t suspect a thing. I don’t think.’
‘I’m proud of you, partner.’
One question still weighed heavily on his heart. ‘What am I going to do if she says no?’
For once Cupido was lost for words.
‘There’s always the possibility, Vaughn.’
‘Jissis, Benna, don’t even think it. Don’t jinx it from the start.’
‘I have to think about it.’
‘Of course she’ll say yes. That woman loves you big-time. I saw it with my own eyes.’
‘I know . . .’
‘So don’t come talk shit to me.’
‘Okay.’ Griessel considered for a while. Then: ‘I also don’t know how to propose. I mean, how do you say it?’
‘That’s more like it. I can help you with that one. You know I’ve got the gift of the gab.’
At half past ten they handed over the signed subpoenas to IMC, and on the way out, overhearing one of Captain Philip van Wyk’s staff say something about the Johnson bank statements, Griessel knew what had been bothering him the whole morning. ‘Follow the money,’ he told Cupido.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The two phantoms. Faku and Green. They must have paid for the train trip.’
‘Check.’ Cupido’s face lit up. ‘How did we miss that one? We’re off our game, Benna.’
Probably because my head is full of wedding bells, thought Griessel, and Cupido, of course, was fretting about Desiree’s boy. But he didn’t say any of it. He phoned Brenda Strydom at Rovos to get the payment details of the two mystery passengers. She asked for ten minutes to find them. She called back to tell him that Faku and Green had paid cash into the Rovos account, and gave him the details. Griessel hid his disappointment, and asked for the contact details of Faku and Green’s hostess on the train.
‘They paid cash,’ he told Cupido.
‘When?’
‘The nineteenth of May. To a teller at First National branch in Table View.’
‘Damn.’
Disappointment, as all bank branches had CCTV cameras that stored images of clients when they went in and out, and completed transactions with the tellers. But the images were usually only kept for thirty or forty days, sometimes, at certain bank groups, up to sixty days, but 19 May was too far in the past.
They sat down to telephone the phantoms’ rail hostess, but Joanie Delport’s number rang and rang before switching to voicemail. They left a message, then wandered out despondently into the corridor to watch Fillander adding to his photo gallery.
The day’s only breakthrough was just after three when Philip van Wyk came to fetch Cupido and Griessel. He led them to IMC’s big office where the analysis of VIP Protection Unit’s Sergeant Kagiso Dimba’s cell-phone records was projected onto a big screen.
‘The first thing we looked at was that night of August the fifth, the night of the murder,’ said Van Wyk. ‘The call from Johnson Johnson to Dimba was at twenty-one oh seven. Duration eighty-three seconds. Consequently, the call ended twenty-one oh eight, plus change. As you can see there, Dimba called Johnson back almost immediately, at twenty-one oh nine. And then another six times, the calls between thirty and forty-five seconds apart. Johnson didn’t answer any of them.’
‘Interesting,’ Griessel said.
‘Why?’ asked Cupido.
‘Dimba told us he called back. He knew we would find it on his phone records, but he tried very hard to create the impression that he was in no hurry to call back.’
‘But he was.’
‘That’s not all,’ Van Wyk said. ‘Dimba made a seventh call. Right after his last attempt to call Johnson back. At twenty-one fifteen, to this number.’ Van Wyk used a laser pointer on the screen. ‘It belongs to the head of the VIP Protection Unit, Colonel Lucas Gwala. That call was nine minutes and sixteen seconds long.’
‘Aitsa,’ said Cupido.
‘We also checked the location of Dimba’s phone that night. When Johnson called him, he was connected to cell-phone tower 357801 in Sunnyside, Pretoria. That’s near the Sunnyside police station, but it doesn’t mean he was at the station. He was on the move after that. At twenty-one twenty-one, tower 355301 in Park Street picked him up, and at twenty-one twenty-nine he connected to tower 354941 at the Union Buildings.’
‘That’s where the VIP Protection Unit is based,’ said Cupido.
‘He was stationary there for almost an hour and a half, at the Union Buildings,’ Van Wyk said.
‘Okay,’ said Griessel, making notes. ‘So, Dimba talked to Johnson, and then immediately phoned back six times. When he didn’t get an answer, he phoned his boss, then drove to his unit at the Union Buildings in a hell of a rush, where he remained for over an hour.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘I smell a rat,’ said Cupido.
‘The stench is worse than you think,’ said Van Wyk. ‘There are a few more interesting things that the database shows us. Number one, we have six months of phone records for Johnson and Dimba. In that time they haven’t called each other once. I think we can assume they were not best friends.’
‘Johnson didn’t just phone t
o say hi,’ said Griessel.
‘Damn straight,’ said Cupido.
‘The other fly in the ointment,’ said Captain Philip van Wyk, ‘is that the detective from Beaufort West was not the first to request Johnson’s phone records.’
‘Really?’
‘We use the same few people at Vodacom to exercise a 205 subpoena. You know how it is, you get to know them and you talk, build relationships . . . When my sergeant spoke to them this morning, the guy said it was the first time he’d had a case being investigated from three different places at the same time. It had to be a very important matter. So Sarge asked, “What do you mean, three places?” And the ou said Pretoria, Beaufort West and us. And Sarge asked who the investigator was from Pretoria, as we didn’t know about him. Here’s the interesting thing. On Sunday, the sixth of August, Colonel Lucas Gwala, commander of the VIP Protection Unit, obtained a 205 for Johnson’s records. Even before the body had been found in the Karoo. Before anyone knew that Johnson had been murdered. One day after he’d been thrown off the train.’
‘Hit me with your laser stick,’ said Vaughn Cupido.
‘That’s the same ou who called Mbali and told her we mustn’t harass Dimba,’ Griessel said.
‘How does that rat smell now?’ asked Philip van Wyk.
‘I perceive the pungent perfume of shenanigans,’ said Cupido. ‘Shitty shenanigans.’
It was then that Joanie Delport called back.
Chapter 26
There was undisguised disbelief and a touch of indignation in Joanie Delport’s voice during the whole phone interview. She wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the detectives, a little disdainful, even, her tone making plain she thought they weren’t the sharpest pencils in the box.
‘The two old chaps?’ she queried. ‘The two old oupas? Really?’
‘That’s right,’ said Benny Griessel. ‘Terrence Faku and Oliver Green. We want—’
‘But they were just two old men. Real old oupas. Lovable, harmless grandpas. Why would they . . . ? No, it can’t be.’
Griessel didn’t want to give her too much information, as they knew how easily everything ended up on social media. ‘Miss, we’re not saying they were the ones. We’re looking at everyone on the train.’
‘Oh. Okay. But . . . you don’t need to worry about them.’
He asked her to start at the beginning, when she’d met them. Her self-confidence wavered for a second. ‘There are so many passengers, two trains a week. I can’t remember everything.’
‘I understand. Just tell us what you do recall.’
She said she remembered their arrival in the departure hall at Cape Town station, because they came a bit late, and were a little embarrassed about it. They turned up in the doorway at the end of the group welcome, each pulling a little suitcase behind him. There was just enough time to say hello before they had to head for the train. She emphasised the positive about the two men, acting as their advocate for the defence. They were ‘darlings’; they apologised for being late because of the heavy traffic. ‘You get all sorts of people on the train. Nice ones and not so nice, and some are too nice. We call the ones like the two oupas “Goldilocks guests” – not too hot, not too cold, just right.’
Terrence Faku called her ‘my dear’; Oliver Green asked if he could call her ‘Joanie’.
She’d shown them to their compartments, each in his own pullman, adjacent to one another.
‘Did they ask to be next to each other?’
‘You’ll have to find out from Bookings.’
Griessel asked if she’d had much contact with them on the train.
‘Not really. They kept to themselves. I saw them in the morning and the evening. Two or three times they were sitting in the white man’s compartment chatting and having a drink. They talked a lot.’
‘The white oupa is Green.’
‘Obviously.’
‘What did they talk about?’
‘I’m no eavesdropper, Captain,’ she answered curtly. And then, more gently: ‘I just . . . I remember coming into Mr Green’s compartment while they were chatting. But I don’t listen to the guests’ conversations.’
‘Did you see them in the lounge?’ Cupido asked. ‘Or the viewing car?’
She thought about that. ‘I can’t remember, I can’t remember precisely . . . We aren’t there the whole time, you understand, we’ve got work to do. I know I did see them in the dining room.’
‘Would you recognise them from a photo?’
‘Of course!’
‘When are you due back in Cape Town?’
‘I’m en route back on the train now. It arrives early tomorrow morning.’
Griessel realised it was Friday. The week had flown. ‘Can we bring a laptop with photos? Tomorrow morning?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’
‘Joanie,’ Cupido said, ‘our problem is we can’t get hold of the grandpas. We just want to find out if they might have seen something. We’ve phoned, looked for their addresses, but they’re nowhere to be found. It’s kind of strange, and we want to make sure they’re okay.’
‘I see,’ she said.
‘So, did they tell you anything about where they live or what they do? Anything that can help us find them?’
She was quiet for a long time. ‘They said they were pensioners. From the Cape, I think . . .’
‘That’s it?’
‘It was . . . I don’t know exactly how it happened, but maybe I asked . . . Most of our passengers are from overseas. So if there are South Africans, you do ask a bit, what they do, where they’re from. I remember I had this picture in my mind of the two old chaps chatting on the veranda of the old-age home in Cape Town, two old friends.’
‘Did they say they lived in an old-age home?’ Griessel asked.
‘I really don’t . . . The thing is, I try to build a picture in my mind of each guest, who they are, and where they’re from so that I can chat to them a little . . . So, I ask a few questions, though you can’t get too personal – lots of these people are very private. The picture I had, they were in a retirement home, but I can’t swear that’s what they said.’
‘Anything else in that picture?’ Cupido asked.
‘Let me think about it. I’ll tell you tomorrow.’
The Directorate for Priority Crimes Investigations in the Cape was a creature with many tentacles. The various units included CATS (Crimes Against The State), the Organised Crime Unit, Statutory Crimes, who also dealt with white-collar crimes, Philip van Wyk’s IMC, and Mbali Kaleni’s Serious and Violent Crimes Unit.
The overarching head was Brigadier Musad Manie, the ‘head honcho of the Cape Town Hawks’, as Cupido sometimes referred to him with a measure of pride. Musad, the Hawks investigators had discovered from a Muslim friend, meant ‘loosed camel’ in Arabic. Members of the South African Police Service liked giving their fellows nicknames. Senior officers in particular. That was how, in the DPCI, he had come to be known as ‘the Camel’. To the hase (rabbits or hares, as policemen generally called the general public, since people who needed the police usually looked like frightened hares in the headlights), it would seem strange because Musad Manie was nothing like a camel. He was a strong man, broad in the chest and shoulders, with a face of granite lines, and a determined chin. Straight from Hollywood Central Casting.
If the Camel intercepted you in the corridor outside the IMC rooms and asked you to pop in, you turned briskly and went with him, while rapidly running through your mind for any recent transgression, the probability being high that you were about to be dragged over the coals. For something serious.
That was exactly what Griessel and Cupido did at 16.17 that Friday afternoon. The Camel invited them to his office. They followed Manie immediately, exchanging a single anxious glance of solidarity.
Colonel Mbali Kaleni was already seated at the round conference table in the brigadier’s office. She seemed more concerned than angry. Manie asked the two detectives to join her. He sat down, made
a tent of his large hands, thrust out his formidable chin. For Kaleni’s sake he spoke English. In his mellifluous tone he said: ‘Gentlemen, I had a call from the national commissioner.’
They were silent. They knew he was referring to the national commissioner of the SAPS, not the national head of the Hawks. They knew this meant a great deal more trouble.
‘It was an interesting call, to say the least.’ Manie’s tone was pleasant and devoid of irony, as if describing some unique experience. ‘The commissioner told me he had spoken to the national director of Public Prosecutions, and he then talked to our honourable minister of police, before giving me the call. And both these esteemed gentlemen asked him to convey to me their full support in the matter. Now, Lieutenant Colonel Kaleni has briefed me on the details of the case concerning the late Johnson Johnson and I am, to say the least, a little puzzled. But let me not speculate. This is what the commissioner told me. It seems that Johnson called a Sergeant Kagiso Dimba on the night of the fifth of August – Dimba being a former colleague of Johnson at the VIP Protection Unit. And during that call Johnson told Dimba that he was going to commit suicide.’
Cupido made a sound as if he were choking. Manie held up a hand for order.
‘And he also gave Sergeant Dimba the reason for his planned suicide. He said he was going to kill himself because he just couldn’t contemplate a future without his beloved wife.’ Still no hint of sarcasm. ‘Dimba was, of course, deeply upset, and tried to talk Johnson out of it. But Johnson just said goodbye, and even though Dimba called back several times, Johnson did not answer. So, Dimba called his commanding officer, Colonel Lucas Gwala, to ask what he should do. The good colonel told Dimba to come and see him, which he did. They realised there was nothing they could do, because Johnson never divulged information during his call to Dimba as to his whereabouts. Nothing, except to get an article 205 subpoena, and try to find out where Johnson was. Which they did the next day. Our national commissioner also told me that Sergeant Dimba has been racked with guilt, because he did not provide Benny here with full and complete details about the call. But, says the commissioner, it was because he wanted to protect a former colleague and dear friend’s reputation, and the good name of the VIP Protection Unit.’